Liar
by milkmoth
Summary: Sakura lied. She is a coward. She is writing this letter just in case, it will be her one moment of bravery. [NaruxSakuxSasu triangle]


**a/n: **It's sad, and it doesn't make much sense. O.o And it's kind of melodramatic, even for angst. But I had the urge to write and, thus, I did… Anyway! I hope you'll all enjoy it. AU – in more ways than one, but for starters Sasuke is still lost from Konoha - and the pairing is NaruxSakuxSasu (triangle). Reviews are loved.

_edit_: I want to stress that the category is angst and the pairing is NaruSakuSasu. Not NaruxSaku (although I do feel that these two are the ones that I focus on). Not SakuSasu, either, despite what it seems. It is not fluff, it's angsty. Which translates to unhappy endings. Triangles that don't get resolved. If you can't handle that (and I understand that there are some who can't, that's fine, just don't flame me later) then don't read it. I don't want to be a waste of you time. Hehe.

* * *

_**Faster and faster**_

_**She rides on the wind**_

_**She does not know where she will end**_

_**She wonders why**_

_**She even began**_

_Thus begins a story. _

Imagine, black ink. Spotty and smudged. A girl with wide, dim, scared eyes; frozen, brush held hovering over the paper, not knowing what to write next. It's a neat little rhyme, she realizes, though there's something immature in the style. It reminds her of a carousel. The words do not. The words are being smudged, now, with her tears. The ink spreads. She wipes her tears away and hopes that no more will fall. She curses them for betraying her.

_Of a girl, just a normal girl, a normal shinobi, a normal killer, a normal lover._

She doesn't know, now, why she wrote them. This is supposed to be a letter. A very important letter, to a very important person. This is no time for poetry.

_But I think he'd want to know, _she realizes in a flash, _I'd think he'd want to know. _

So she poises the pen in her hand again. She is literally trembling. Why is she doing this? Isn't this like signing her own deathwish? To write this note?

_It's not as if you're going to die, _she tells herself, _you're not going to die. _

She knows, though, that there is a chance. And if she does, she wants him to know.

The pen will not move.

But another thought comes, and she itches to write it. But her hand refuses to move to her will.

She will start with his name.

_**Naruto**_

_Now what? _she asks herself, _what do I write now?_

How does one write one's deathwish and darkest secrets? To the one who'd held her tight and let her cry?

So she forces her hand to write it, and each second feels worse than a kunai in her gut. Physical pain is simple to take. This pain hurts where her chakra can't heal.

_**I'm going after Sasuke.**_

Start with the truth, no, the facts. Get to her feelings later.

_**Because I can't stand him not here. I'm**_

What is she? Weak? Pathetic? Unhappy?

A liar?

_**tired of crying. **_

There.

_**I know you don't really see. I don't really do it so much, anymore, but lately I think about him more and more. I can't stop. Some of my ideas are really horrible.**_

She thought she was over that.

(_No,not him. That was hopeless.)_

Her weakness.

_**I'm sorry**_

For what? God, there are so many things.

_**because I don't love you.**_

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

_I've just written it, _she realizes, sick to her stomach, repulsed with herself, _I wrote it. _

As this thought and all it connotes diseases her mind her vision blurs and her tears fall and betray her as a shinobi's never should.

They are recorded for all (_no, just him) _to see. He would never tell. She is sure. He would take her awful secret to the grave, because he loved her. Even though she has led him on and told him lies (_I love you) _he would forgive her because to him, she will always be his Sakura-chan.

_**And that's all. **_

_**I just want you to know that, if I die. If Sasuke kills me. Funny, you know? I love him, and he might kill me. It's like he doesn't care. I think he does, somewhere, don't you? **_

The tear stains give her away; her brush makes the strokes of its own accord; her writing is becoming ramble, just as her speech would.

And then, without thinking, she signs it.

_**Sakura**_

And she folds it and mindlessly, robotically, she arranges for it to be delivered. She does not want to do it in person. She is too much a coward.

_And thus ends her story._

Not quite.

She found Sasuke. She brought him back.

He agreed to marry her.

It was a whirl of light and joy.

A part of her, though, never came back to her. A part of her heart, too, just like when Sasuke too it. (_Which reminded her, he still hadn't returned it_.)

She was happy. She loved him very much, and her smiles returned. She felt as though she would never cry again. Sasuke was everything. He was her all. He had still cared. He had not killed her; no; they had fought – she had broken down into tears. He had agreed to return.

She loved him.

But there was a shadow in Naruto's blue eyes, one that never quite disappeared; that made her stomach sick and made her repulsed with herself; a shadow that was there whether he was smiling or laughing or toasting her wedding. But he never told. They never talked about that letter, that one moment of courage and betrayal. He never exposed her for the lying weakling that she really was; she was still his Sakura-chan.

She did not love him.

But…

(_Sometimes, she wondered if she had made the right choice.)_


End file.
